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Thursday, September 19, 2013

Dystopia USA: Detroit

As reported by the UK Telegraph,"Detroit bankruptcy: Life in the US city that went bust: In the Autumn of 2012 The Telegraph visited Detroit - America’s first post-industrial city - to explore the reasons behind its bankruptcy," by Alastair Good, on 19 July 2013 -- On the ground in Detroit, Michigan, with a population of nearly two million at its peak dwindling to under 800,000 today, the city is one of the first to have to deal with the very real problem of moving to a state of post-industrialisation which might soon be replicated across the country.

From people living in abandoned car plants to entrepreneurs making furniture out of disused school desks, the city of Detroit is trying to find a way to thrive again in a world that has seen industry move out of the Midwest, taking a large part of the city’s population with it.

“I like living here it gives me a sense of solitude. I can do what I like to do and I don’t have to worry about bills, bills, bills,” says Allan Hill, 67, a long time resident of the former forge room at the abandoned Packard Plant site in the city.

Hill and his partner bought the forge room building a few years ago and brought it back to life, running a small metal fabrication and car repair business from the premises.

Around them the vast car plant lies crumbling. The occasional ‘urban explorer’ comes with camera in hand to snap photographs of the massive site as it sinks slowly back into the earth.

Homes in the area around the factory have also begun sinking inexorably into the soil of the city.

John Carlisle, a local journalist who has spent time chronicling the lives of those still living in the Motor City describes the vast expanses of green fields where neighbourhoods used to exist: “People abandon the houses and after a while they crumble to the ground or get burned down and eventually you get these prairies where whole blocks once stood.”

And the city is struggling.

When Henry Ford began making vehicles in the city in 1903 a long tradition was born that saw General Motors and Chrysler both building huge factories that turned out millions of cars and trucks.

Competition from overseas, petrol crises in 1973 and 1979 and strong unions all put pressure on the car building industry and in 2008 the financial crisis brought things to a head.

The sub-prime mortgage crash coincided with an energy crisis that raised petrol prices and made American consumers think again about the cost of filling up their SUV’s and pickup trucks.

In Detroit, the big three had been focused on building these high profit models while their foreign competitors introduced smaller, more efficient cars and trucks onto the market. A lot of these cars were made on American soil by American workers but for foreign companies who offered much reduced pay and benefits to their workforce.

Chrysler and General Motors received billions in bail out money from the Bush and Obama governments.

Ford had already begun reorganising its business and only asked for a line of credit from the government to enable it to compete on equal terms with Chrysler and GM.

At Ford’s Dearborn truck manufacturing plant employee Armentha Young explains: “The auto industry has been the backbone to a lot of people’s lives. I hope that my children get a chance to see how vital the industry is.” A single mother, Ms Young supports two children with her job at the factory.

In Midtown you can see the outline of the Renaissance Centre from outside of the Green Garage, an incubation space for small companies with a sustainability component to their business.

Jason Peet is an entreprenuer who decided to set up a business re-purposing unwanted materials in the city.

One of his first commissions was to find desks for the companies who will be based at the building and he soon discovered that the shrinking city had a growing surplus of furniture as the reduced population meant the city had to close schools.

There are two main opinions on what to do about Detroit, those who want to see more investment in the city by the federal government to help bring industry and people back and those, like Mr Peet who feel the city has to accept it has changed and look to the future: “It’s not going to look like the Detroit of 1950. Its not even going to look like Indianapolis which has 500,000 people. It has to be something unique.” (source: UK Telegraph)

Runaway Slave Gordon. From the Smithsonian Photography Initiativ e, "Photography changes the way we record and respond to social...

Capoeira

African Martial Arts of Brazil

About the Banjo by Tony Thomas

The banjo is a product of Africa. Africans transported to the Caribbean and Latin America were reported playing banjos in the 17th and 18th centuries, before any banjo was reported in the Americas. Africans in the US were the predominant players of this instrument until the 1840s.

Charleston Slave Tags and Slave Badges

Badge laws existed in several Southern cities, urban centers such as Mobile and New Orleans, Savannah and Norfolk; the practice of hiring out slaves was common in both the rural and urban South. But the only city known to have implemented a rigid and formal regulatory system is Charleston.

MANILLA: MONEY OF THE SLAVE TRADE

Manilla. Manillas were brass bracelet-shaped objects used by Europeans in trade with West Africa, from about the 16th century to the 1930s. They were made in Europe, perhaps based on an African original.Once Bristol entered the African trade, manillas were made locally for export to West Africa.

SLAVE CURRENCY: African Slave Trade Beads

In Africa, trade beads were used in West Africa by Europeans who got them from Venice, Holland, and Bohemia. They used millions of beads to trade with Africans for slaves, services, and goods such as palm oil, gold, and ivory. The trade with Africans was so vital that some of the beads were made specifically for Africans.

Slave Trade Currency: Cowry Shells

Long before our era the cowry shell was known as an instrument of payment and a symbol of wealth and power. This monetary usage continued until the 20th century. If we look a bit closer into these shells it is absolutely not astonishing that varieties as the cypraea moneta or cypraea annulus were beloved means of payments and eventually became in some cases huge competitors of metal currencies.

Bunce Island Slave Factory

Cannons with the Royal Crest

Adanggaman

Africans Making Slaves of Africans

Ota Benga The Man in the Bronx Zoo

Ota Benga (1883-1916) was an African Congolese Pygmy, who was put on display in the monkey house at the Bronx Zoo in New York in1906

Railroads and Slave Labor

North America's four major rail networks — Norfolk Southern, CSX, Union Pacific and Canadian National — all own lines that were built and operated with slave labor.

Sculptor Augusta Savage

"Lift every voice and sing" by Augusta Savage: New York World's Fair.

Afro-Uruguay Spirit of Resistance in Candombe

In the streets of Montevideo, Uruguay, Afro-Uruguayans celebrate an often-ignored part of their history - Candombe and resistance.

Tintin: Sinister Racist Propaganda

Tintin has been an inspiration for generations. But his status as a paragon of wholesome adventure is under threat, thanks to a court bid to ban one of his books, Tintin in the Congo, for its racist portrayal of Africans.

W.E.B. DuBois

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." -- W.E.B. DuBois

Slave Tortures

Portugal Slave Trade

1501-1866 Portugal transported 5,848,265 people from Africa to the Americas.

French Slave Trade

1501-1866 France transported 1,381,404 Africans to America.

Great Britain Slave Trade

1501-1866 The British transported 3,259,440 Africans to the Americas.

Spain Slave Trade

1501-1866 Spain transported 1,061,524 Africans to the Americas

Denmark Slave Trade

1501-1866 Denmark transported 111,041 people from Africa.

United States Slave Trade

1501-1866 The USA transported 305,326 Africans to the Americas.

Netherlands Slave Trade

"To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?" — Marcus Tullius Cicero